Hints for using ASDF with OpenMCL

Introduction

ASDF is a system definition facility. Starting with OpenMCL 0.14.2, it is included as part of the standard distribution and can be used with a simple: (require 'asdf).

OpenMCL also includes ASDF-INSTALL, a CPAN-style repository for Common Lisp. The site includes an enumeration of all the useful code it can fetch and install for you.

You may need to add following to ~/.asdf-install to disable gpg sig verification:

(setq asdf-install:*verify-gpg-signatures* nil)

Set-up

Prepare the system so that admin users can use asdf-install to install packages for the entire system:

GNU Privacy Guard

You will need the GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) to confirm that the packages you download and install have not been corrupted or tampered with by an attacker. If you do not already have GPG, you will need to install it using either your package installer (e.g., MacPorts? or Fink), or by downloading a native Mac port of the software.

If you don't want to bother with validation of the packages (a bad idea), you can always disable the check by adding the following statement to your openmcl-init.lisp file:

(setq asdf-install:*verify-gpg-signatures* nil)

Prepare Your System

Once OpenMCL is installed, there are a few directories that need to be setup (and permissions verified) so that you can use ASDF-Install with minimum effort. The instructions are different depending on the method used to obtain OpenMCL.

For Fink Users

sudo chmod -R g+w /sw/lib/openmcl/ccl # The admin group can write into all this directory tree.
sudo mkdir /usr/local/asdf-install # Create a directory where the files shall go
sudo chgrp admin /usr/local/asdf-install # Make sure it belongs to the admin group
sudo chmod g+w /usr/local/asdf-install # The admin group can write into all this directory tree